Capturing the Voices of Hong Kong

By Joyce Lau

Sept. 29, 2015

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A scene from ‘‘Hong Kong Trilogy’’ by Christopher Doyle.

HONG KONG — A year ago, Hong Kong erupted in mass democracy protests, triggered by what participants saw as an attempt by the government in Beijing to control local elections. The Occupy Central civil disobedience movement took over Asia’s financial center with a tent-city that stretched as far as the eye could see. International television crews and photographers flocked here to capture scenes of students fighting the riot police amid volleys of tear gas.

Among the many cameramen was Christopher Doyle, the eccentric cinematographer who won international acclaim for films like Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love” (2000) and Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” (2002), and who has started directing his own works.

Mr. Doyle, a fluent Chinese speaker who has lived here since the 1970s, avoided the dramatic shots that made the news. He crept into the protest zone at the break of dawn, when demonstrators were sleeping, and filmed details of daily life: a little girl delivering water, a lone teenager in the makeshift study area, a middle-aged man collecting garbage on a metal cart. Mr. Doyle, 63, captured what Occupy felt like most of the time — its sense of intense and prolonged waiting.

The footage was incorporated into Mr. Doyle’s latest work, “Hong Kong Trilogy,” which had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this month, and had its wider theatrical release in Hong Kong on Monday, the one-year anniversary of the police’s tear-gas assault on student protesters. It is expected to be shown at festivals this year in Copenhagen; Busan, South Korea; and Mumbai, India.

In an interview over beers at The Fringe alternative art space here, Mr. Doyle stressed that he did not set out to record only the short history of the movement. The Sydney native has long been listening to the voices on this city’s streets, and said he saw the demonstrations as just one episode in Hong Kong’s modern history. “Hong Kong Trilogy” is in fact a quirky art-house production that is part feature film, part documentary. Its three sections — “Preschooled,” “Preoccupied” and “Preposterous” — explore three generations, from the very young to the very old. Only the middle segment concerns itself with the idealistic youth who ignited the Occupy protests.

“It is not an Occupy documentary,” he said. “It is a film about Hong Kong and Hong Kong people, not a breaking news report.”

Mr. Doyle, also known here by his Chinese name of Du Kefeng, is the only foreigner to rank as a major figure in Hong Kong cinema. In his younger years, traveling and living in Asia and the Middle East, he was a cow herder, oil driller and Chinese-medicine healer. He finally found a home in Hong Kong, where he began a decades-long collaboration with Wong Kar-wai. Mr. Doyle’s portrayals of this city’s dense, labyrinthine streets garnered prizes at the Venice (1994) and Cannes (2000) film festivals, and made him into one of the world’s most acclaimed cinematographers. “I’ve shot something like 15 films just in these five, six square kilometers,” he said of central Hong Kong. “And it’s always a new experience.”

For “Hong Kong Trilogy,” Mr. Doyle worked with two local filmmakers, Ken Hui and Jenny Suen, to interview a wide range of residents, from students being pushed through the high-pressure school system, to lonely seniors looking for love late in life. The interviewees’ narratives, often told in voiceover, were then woven into a loose series of fictional vignettes, with the parts played by the interviewees themselves, not professional actors.

Mr. Hui, the film’s co-producer, said the focus was on “real people, with real voices, integrated into a story.”

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Christopher Doyle in Hong Kong last year.CreditJason Yung

“The beauty, the pleasure of making this film, comes from the fact that it was based on interviews,” Mr. Doyle said. “It was hugely liberating — one of my most liberating experiences ever as a filmmaker. We didn’t direct them; we just followed them. It’s like working with a great actor who takes you somewhere else.”

Because it is neither entirely fiction nor nonfiction, “Hong Kong Trilogy” has a surreal quality. The characters are given generic names, like Red Cap Girl (an oddly religious child who lives in a poor fishing community) or Beat Box (a geeky young man and possibly the world’s worst hip-hop artist).

The liveliest of the three segments is the last one, “Preposterous.” A group of lonely senior citizens sign up for a speed-dating program, where Beat Box herds them through various activities while barking into a megaphone. (“Do not lie about your age! No refunds! Come on, find a partner!”) The backdrop is fictional and humorous. But then voice-overs are layered on from real-life older citizens, some of whom had escaped from Communist China decades ago, leaving behind loved ones.

Ultimately, “Hong Kong Trilogy” is a movie about generational differences, and was made by filmmakers from two very different eras.

Mr. Doyle is a veteran of the Hong Kong Second Wave from the 1970s to ’90s, when the city was considered a creative, independent voice in world cinema. But Ms. Suen and Mr. Hui, 31 and 32 respectively, started working long after Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to Beijing — at a time when mainland China was becoming politically, economically and culturally dominant.

Ms. Suen said she has witnessed a sea-change since she started working in the Hong Kong film industry about five years ago. From 2009 to today, the number of cinema screens in China has jumped from 4,000 to 24,000. Hollywood has been falling over itself to get into China’s booming market, while Hong Kong has been left behind. “Now it’s a gold rush, and it’s so commercial,” she said.

Ms. Suen felt this transition keenly, as it was her job to fundraise for the project. In the current environment, “Hong Kong Trilogy” was a particularly hard sell: It’s an art-house film, with coverage of a politically sensitive event, and no movie stars. Plus, it’s in Cantonese, the dialect spoken in Hong Kong, but increasingly being overtaken by the Mandarin Chinese of China.

Lacking corporate support, Ms. Suen turned to online crowd-sourcing, which is how she raised about $125,000 of the $200,000 total budget.

“Hong Kong Trilogy” was produced almost entirely outside of the mainstream film establishment. “All I did was create a construct for Hong Kong people to speak,” Mr. Doyle said. In its quiet way, it depicts the daily life of seven million people who are still looking for their place in the world — a struggling democracy under the shadow of a rising China.

“Hong Kong is the main character of this film. It is the star,” Mr. Doyle said. “It we don’t speak up for Hong Kong people, who will?”